


the tabernacle, reconstructed

by encroix



Category: Wonder Woman (2017)
Genre: Anxiety Attacks, Character Death Fix, Domestic Fluff, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Fluff, Happy Ending, Light Angst, Living Together, Long Shot, Non-Linear Narrative, Oral Sex, Post-Movie(s), Steve Trevor Lives
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-16
Updated: 2017-07-16
Packaged: 2018-11-21 20:13:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,813
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11364804
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/encroix/pseuds/encroix
Summary: Steve Trevor never expected to build a life backwards. Sometimes what you get is what you get. (post-movie)





	the tabernacle, reconstructed

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from _litany in which certain things are crossed out_ by Richard Siken, which is not really an appropriate poem for this ship, although this phrase is.
> 
> Also,
> 
>  
> 
> _Build me a city and call it Jerusalem. Build me another and call it_  
>  _Jerusalem._  
>  _We have come back from Jerusalem where we found not_  
>  _what we sought, so do it over, give me another version,_  
>  _a different room, another hallway, the kitchen painted over_  
>  _and over,_  
>  _another bowl of soup._  
>  _The entire history of human desire takes about seventy minutes to tell._  
>  _Unfortunately, we don’t have that kind of time._

* * *

 

It’s not like the fairy tales. It isn’t a kiss, it isn’t kind, it isn’t light breaking through the trees and the noise of birds singing. When he opens his eyes for the first time in he can’t remember how long—and, oh, god, he can’t remember? How long?—there’s only the feeling of smoke scratching along his insides and his bones aching from a fall of indeterminate height.

He wakes up, turns onto his side, and retches.

He wakes up surrounded by trees and nothing else, the sky blacked out beneath high canopies and webs of thin branches, and he wonders just how long it will take him to die. (But it’s war, of course, and he’s a soldier, and every soldier plans for the possibility.)

What he remembers is thin: his hand, shaking, weighted with the cool metal of a loaded gun; praying and praying and praying in the quiet and hearing nothing but the whir of propellers beating back the wind. What he remembers is pressing a watch into someone’s hand, confessing love the way that others confess sins, hoping for a kind of redemption and not quite deserving it.

Steve Trevor knows how it was all supposed to end.

The problem was he never quite expected it to begin again.

 

 

 

 

 

 

So it begins with what feels like two cracked ribs and a sprained ankle, and him, limping his way through a dark forest, unarmed. His clothes are heavy, stained with mud and his own blood, scratching roughly against his skin as he tries to move. There is no food, no radio, not even a canteen. (Some soldier he makes.)

He presses his hand to his face and counts the steps, counts his breathing, staring up at the sky in the hopes of being able to find a direction and stick to it. (Did he mention no compass? No compass, either.) He tracks along by what light manages to pierce through, and hopes that, sooner or later, he will find something that will lead him to a town, to people, to a place with a mattress where he can lie down and be dosed with enough painkillers to forget the damage he’s doing to himself right now.

He keeps going.

 

 

 

 

 

 

They find his body by the side of the road, foot and leg swollen, shot through with shrapnel and healing slow.

The uniform is a muted green, washed out by his blood, by grit, by time passed. He carries no ID.

 

 

 

 

(He dreams, of course. The noise of blood rushing in his ears sounds like the familiar lap of water and, behind his shoulder, he can feel the presence of someone watching. It’s been too long since he’s gone to church, too long since he thought about whether or not he even really believed in that sort of thing, but there’s no ignoring the flicker of the silhouette, drawn hazy by the angle of the sun and his own weak vision.

There, edged in black, he can see a figure hovering, looking down on him. A trick of the light or a slanted shadow, maybe, but he swears he can see the suggestion of a wing.

Light curves around the shadow, bending at the edges, and he can feel its touch against his chest, a ribbon of gold, gentle and soothing.

He gasps, his chest straining under the weight of the breath, and the light lingers like a hand against his skin, warming him right through.)

 

 

 

 

 _It’s all right_ , somebody says.

_It’s going to be all right._

_Help is on the way._

_Just hold on._

 

 

The second time he wakes, it’s to stark white lighting and the shrill noise of a curtain screeching across a metal rod. He tries to move, and something rattles.

“Just try to stay still,” a voice says. “You’ll pull out your IV.”

The room comes into focus, and he blinks at a dark, round face, a stethoscope slung around the shoulders.

“How are you feeling?”

“Like I fell off a truck,” he says, voice gravelly. He tries to clear his throat.

“I’ll have the nurse bring you some ice,” the doctor says. “You’ve been out for a few days.”

“A few _days_?” he says, trying to take it all in. He’s in some kind of an intake room, facing a handful of other beds. A steady hum of beeping fills the quiet.

“We didn’t find any ID on you. You have anyone we should call?”

He tries to think of a name, but nothing comes to mind. A myriad of faces flash before his eyes, but none of them are recognizable.

“Wife? Husband? Mom, dad? Anyone?”

He shakes his head.

“We set your ribs and your ankle. Looked like you were pretty dehydrated, and the concussion didn’t help either,” the doctor says. “We’ve been keeping you on just to make sure that you’re out of the woods, but you should be good to go in a day or two. Maybe you rest up and think of someone who can come and get you by then.”

He presses his lips together and nods. “The ice?” he says.

“I’ll send the nurse right in,” the doctor says. “Try to rest.”

“Hey, doc?” he says.

The doctor pauses.

“How did I get here?”

“Some people found you by the side of the highway. You were lucky you didn’t get run over.”

“The…what?”

The doctor shakes his head. “It should come back to you in a day or two. I wouldn’t worry about it.”

His head aches just trying to think about it. “You didn’t find anything with my name on it?”

The man shakes his head.

“That’ll come back to me, too?”

“Well,” the doctor says with a weak smile, “If it doesn’t, you got a pretty good chance at having a fresh start.”

He coughs a weak laugh. “Yeah,” he says. “Right.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

He tries to remember his name, but all he sees are slashes of other people: red hair in curls, the smell of lilac; a serious face offset with mischievous eyes, hidden by the rising smoke of a campfire; a woman in a blue dress, her hair pulled into a twist, with a slender neck and sharp, cutting eyes.

He tries to remember his name and hears a woman’s voice call out, sharp and desperate.

He strains to listen, but all he catches is the pain and confusion in her voice, the funny pang it strikes in his chest as he hears its tone. Even without the words. Even without understanding her, all he can feel is the pull of grief. Hers or his, he isn’t sure.

Whoever she is, he thinks, she must have meant a lot to him, whoever he is.

Whoever she is, he thinks, she must have been worth the trouble of whatever he did to his ribs, his ankle, his head.

His mind, struggling to remember, salvages one piece of the puzzle: whoever she is, he thinks, rubbing at the bare skin of his wrist, she must have his watch.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

_He’s fourteen and fussing with the laces of his shoes. There’s a stoop, beat-up and dusty like just about every other house on the block, and his old man comes and takes a seat next to him on the step._

_What Steve knows about his father is what he’s managed to pull together from all of the stories his mother and grandmother have told him. He’s a good man, his dad, and the kind of guy willing to put his life on the line for something when it counts. He’s fought his battles, like any man should do, and left a couple other things behind._

_Steve stares at the ground._

_“There’s something I want to talk to you about,” his dad says, which is never how a good conversation with his father begins._

_“Yeah, pop,” he says. “What do you need?”_

_There’s the click of a latch, and then, a watch—sitting in his father’s hand, extended to him like a peace offering._

_He stares at it, lying there in the palm of his dad’s hand, ticking away. “Dad?”_

_“I think it’s time I pass it along,” his dad says, gaze fixed forward. “It doesn’t do a man any good to keep looking backward. Sooner or later, he’s got to start thinking about the future. About the kind of man his son is going to be, the kind of life he’s going to live.”_

_“It’s your watch,” Steve says._

_“And now it’s yours,” his father says. “I’m giving it to you not so you’re always looking at it, but so you might remember to let it go every once in a while. You control the watch, Steve. It doesn’t control you. You remember that.”_

_There’s a long silence._

_“You should take it,” his father says._

_“When are you heading back to the base?” he says._

_“Couple days.”_

_“Thanks, pop,” he says._

_His father claps a hand to his back and lets it linger. They don’t say anything else._

The nurse wakes him with a needle, jabbing something else into another vein without even glancing at him.

“Hey,” he mumbles, shifting up in his bed.

“Don’t move, please,” she says.

“What are you doing? What is this?” he says.

There’s a pinch at his arm as she slides a tube in, and a bag of liquid rattles against a metal coat rack. “Just something to keep you hydrated,” the nurse says. “Nothing to worry about.”

“Would you know if anything of mine came in since I’ve been here? I’m trying to find my watch.”

The nurse shakes her head. “If you have anything, you’ll get it all back once you’re discharged.”

“It was my dad’s watch,” he says. “It means a lot to me. Could you…”

“I can ask around,” she says, “But I really don’t know. I can’t make any promises.”

He reaches for her hand. “Please,” he says. “I’d really appreciate it.”

She flashes a smile. “Sure.”

 

 

 

 

That night, she returns to adjust the small clear pouch feeding into him, her mouth tucked down at the corners. “I’m sorry,” she says. “You didn’t come in with much on you.”

“No watch?” he says.

“No watch,” she says. “But cheer up. Someone came by to ask about you today. Maybe he can jog your memory.”

Steve wrinkles his brow. “He?”

“Yeah,” the nurse says. “Says he was your friend. Someone you know maybe.”

Steve closes his eyes and feels a pulse of pain ripple across his temple. “Maybe.”

 

 

 

 

 

The man comes by two days later.

He walks in slow, his hands in his pockets, his eyes narrowed as if already suspicious. “Cowboy,” he says, and the voice is low, its tone lilting and familiar.

“Chief,” he answers.

The man’s eyebrows raise slowly. “So you remember?” he says.

Steve shakes his head. “I don’t think so,” he says. “But there’s something about you that I know I know. Even if I don’t know it right now.”

A plastic chair scrapes noisily against the floor as he pulls it near the bed. “You’re lucky you ended up out here,” he says. “I don’t listen to the scanner a lot.”

“You mind telling me where here is?” Steve says. “Since I got here, no one’s been telling me much of anything.”

“What do you remember?”

“Not much. A couple faces, but no one I could name. Right before I fell, I remember holding something… A weapon, maybe? And I was flying, I think. And…something about the watch that I had. It’s missing now.”

The Chief listens to his answer with a blank stare, careful to hide his reactions. “Who’s the President of the United States?”

“Wilson,” Steve answers.

The man fishes something small and blocky out of his pocket, his fingers tapping against it quickly before he turns and presses it into his hand. “Steve,” he says. “You’re not going to believe me, but this man is the president right now, not Wilson. It’s 2017.”

Steve sucks in a breath, his face contorting with confusion, and returns the phone to him. “Two thousand and…”

“Seventeen,” Chief finishes. “Yeah. You’ve been out for a long while.”

He shakes his head. “You’re putting me on.”

Chief shrugs. “Look around, Cowboy. Any of this feel normal to you?”

“Well, that’s kind of a loaded question,” he says. “Nothing about this feels…normal. But if what you’re saying is true, where the hell have I been for the last hundred years?”

“You want the truth?”

“Might as well. In for a penny…”

“We thought you were dead,” Chief says. “When we saw your plane go up…”

“We?”

A smile flickers on the man’s face. “One thing at a time, cowboy. One thing at a time.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

So here’s what he learns: his name is Steve Trevor, he’s maybe thirty-years-old, give or take a couple, he used to be a captain in the Air Force, and everybody figured he was killed in action in combat. The last president he remembers is from a century ago, which either makes this a really weird dream, a hallucination, or some kind of universal practical joke. That, or an act of God, though he’s not in a position to accept any of those answers right now.

He’s landed at a hospital somewhere in Montana, and he’s got at least one friend in the world.

And if this isn’t a massive practical joke or a side effect of whatever they have running into his veins right now, everyone he knows, everyone he remembers, must be dead.

What a hell of a thing to wake up to.

 

 

 

 

 

 

His friend comes back with an envelope full of gifts.

He leafs through them quickly from his hospital bed before the nurses come back for their rounds. Passport, driver’s license, birth certificate.

“1985, huh?” he says, thumbing through the documents.

“Bad decade,” the Chief says. “But pretty good music.”

He scoffs a laugh. “Where’d you get all this stuff?”

“Let’s just say I found it,” Chief says.

“Just like you found the car?” he says.

“You starting to remember again, cowboy?”

Steve shakes his head. “I don’t know if I’d call it that,” he says. “It’s just bits and pieces.”

“Sometimes that’s all it is,” the Chief says. “You live long enough and everything starts to feel like bits and pieces.”

Steve can sense it—a scrap of a truth that he’s talking around—but they’re still new friends, for what it’s worth, and everyone deserves the chance to sit on the secrets they want to, so he keeps his mouth shut and just hums low in his throat. “The nurses tell you when they’re thinking of letting me out of here?”

“Soon as we find somebody to sign for you,” the Chief says.

“And what? You can’t do me a favor?”

“I’ve done you enough favors,” the Chief says, laughing. “But don’t worry. I’ve got a plan.”

“And what’s that?”

“Diana.”

A chill runs down his neck. He whispers the name, testing the sound of it in his mouth. “Diana.”

Chief eyes him carefully, his expression blank.

Steve remembers the warmth of a body in his arms, the crisp scent of snow in the air. “Diana.” He tries it again, and the name summons the feel of a body lying beside him, the coolness of her hands and the noise of her soft snore as they drifted along a sea.

“What do you remember?” the Chief says.

What does he remember?

She smelled like laurel and sandalwood. Her smile lit up against the sky, bright against a backdrop of clear ocean and the sour taste of brine in his throat. Her eyes, large and warm, lingered on his, inviting him in. Into her room. Into her life.

He shivers. “Bits and pieces,” he says.

The Chief looks at him and nods.

 

 

 

 

 

 

It’s a Tuesday. She comes straight from the city, dressed in a tight wrap dress with her hair pulled back into a sleek ponytail.

Her hand shakes as she signs the release paperwork.

“Miss Prince?” the doctor says.

“Yes. What can you tell me about his condition?”

“He’s suffered a concussion and some minor memory loss, so you may need to be patient. He may not recognize you, but this is all to be expected.”

“Will he recover?” she says.

“We expect that he’ll regain it over time,” the doctor says, “but it’s difficult to predict these things.”

She clicks the pen, and returns the papers across the small counter. “When can I see him?”

The doctor smiles. “Whenever you’re ready,” the doctor says. “Room 422.”

She sucks in a quick breath, flashing a smile. “Thank you. Truly.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

When she steps into the room, she gasps, her hands rising to cover her mouth as she hovers in the doorway. A pang of longing strikes him hard in the chest, his mouth running dry. He doesn’t remember her. He doesn’t recognize her, and if it weren’t for the look on her face as she sees him for the first time in years, if it weren’t for the way his chest tightens, he would think she’s the kind of woman you wouldn’t be able to forget. Striking.

He squints at her, tilting his head. “I remember…” he begins, haltingly, “your hair…looked different.”

She coughs a laugh, her heels scuffing against the linoleum as she inches closer.

His ribs ache as he sucks in another breath and just _looks_ at her.

“Diana,” the Chief greets, and he watches as the two of them embrace. There’s a conversation passing between the two of them in weighted glances, and he’s stuck here, just watching.

“Thank you for calling me,” she whispers. “It’s good to see you again.”

The Chief tightens his arms around her. “I know it’s hard to believe, but I wouldn’t have called you if I didn’t think…”

“He’s alive,” she whispers, her voice cracking on a sob. The tears begin to spill down her cheeks and all he wants to do is reach out and touch her face, to reassure her, to tell her that everything’s going to be all right. The Chief runs his hands along her arms in a gesture of comfort, but she ducks her head.

“Diana,” Steve whispers.

“How?” she says.

“Come here.”

She approaches the bed, her hands gingerly resting on the guardrails. He takes her hands in his own, feeling the calluses beneath her knuckles, the thin fingers, the supple curve of her palm. She’s shaking just barely, but he can feel it the way that movement ripples in water.

“I’m sorry I don’t remember,” he says.

“They said you had a concussion,” she says, her hands skimming across the edge of his hairline. “You hit your head.”

“Yeah,” he says. “I guess you’d know more about that than me right now.”

His hands slide up her arms to brush against her shoulders, to finger the ends of her hair. She smells so familiar, woodsy and warm, and all he wants to do is bury his head against her shoulder and breathe her in.

“God, I missed you,” he says.

“How can you say that?” she says, gently. “You don’t remember me.”

His hand slides to cup her jaw, his thumb tracing the line of it softly. “I remember things like this,” he says. “Not your birthday, or where you’re from, or our anniversary or anything, but this—this is what I remember.”

Her eyes flutter shut for a moment. “Steve,” she breathes.

“Angel,” he replies.

Her eyes snap open, her head tilting as she appraises him.

“See what I mean?” he says. “It’s not the kind of thing that’s really all that useful.”

“I brought you something,” she says, pulling away to peer inside her handbag. Her hand dips inside and fishes it out a moment later.

“My watch,” he says, taking it from her. The hands are stuck at five past nine, frozen and silent. “My dad’s watch. Gone through hell and back.” He peers at it, tapping the glass with the nail of his thumb when he realizes. “I gave it to you.”

Her voice shakes. “Steve,” she begins. “I just want to say…”

He reaches for her hand, returning the watch to her. “Hey,” he says. “It was a gift. You keep it.”

“Steve.”

“We have time now,” he says. His eyes fill with tears, body beginning to tremble with a grief and a terror he doesn’t yet recall, and he swallows it down. “We have time.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

She spends the night with him in the hospital, answering his questions, telling him about the places he’s taken her, the things that he introduced her to, the battles they fought. An ice cream cone in a packed train station. Her first beer. The way they danced in the middle of a town square.

The fuzzy edges of his memory begin to sketch themselves in stronger detail, though he struggles to reassemble the pieces. She is the clearest thing he can recall: light breaking behind her head, her smile, her touch.

“You’re the only thing I can really remember,” he says. “I’m sorry I don’t. I wish that I could…”

There are flashes of other parts of his life, too: gunfire and thick mud crusting over heavy boots, an old drill instructor, how to fly a propeller plane.

He looks up and sees her eyes—wide with curiosity, with skepticism, with reserve. It must have been hard to need to grieve and mourn someone, he figures, only to wake up one day and find that they’re just the same as they ever were. His was the easy part.

“I must have loved you,” he says, a quiet admittance. “And I must have done something stupid.”

“I never thought I would see you again,” she says. “I thought you were lost."

“Well,” he says. “I’m here now.”

She leans in slowly and kisses his forehead.

“Diana,” he says, cupping her face, “Princess of Themyscira.”

“You remember,” she whispers.

He leans his forehead against hers, his arms wrapping around her shoulders and pulling her into him. She begins to rest her weight against him, her body relaxing into his. “I remember you.”

He breathes her in.

 

 

 

 

 

 

She signs his discharge paperwork, and they set out in her rental car towards the airport.

This is how Steve Trevor reenters the world.

(With no skills, no employment history, no family, no friends, and no means of paying his rent.

It isn’t the best-laid plan he’s ever had.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

They return to the city. Which, it turns out, is not in Montana, but a long flight away in New York.

The city is not quite what he remembers, but close enough. There are still rats scurrying in the street, still tons of people clogging up streets and pathways, talking, fighting, making noise. The buildings are all pushed in together, starved for room, and the noise of cars, of workers, fills every gap of space.

They return to the city, and he breathes it in—the noise, the smell of garbage and smoke—with a sigh.

“You actually missed this,” she says, a note of humor in her voice.

“Well,” he says. “It’s not for everybody. But I like it.”

She laughs then.

“What?” he says.

“You,” she says. “All of you. No matter how much things change, you remain the same.”

He looks out at the world, all polished glass and sleek metal lines, and he thinks of the thick coal smoke that used to blacken the sides of brick buildings. He thinks of the blackness of the forest, his leg pounding with pain, the skin mottled yellow and blue. “You like it more than you used to,” he says. “Or else you wouldn’t live here.”

“And what do you know about what I used to like?” she asks.

He shrugs. “Maybe nothing,” he says.

She exhales, a quiet sigh. “I have gotten…used to living like this,” she says. “It is so much different than what it was like at home.”

“Sometimes that’s easier,” he says. “It helps to keep them apart when you think about them. You won’t confuse one for the other.”

“And what about you, Steve Trevor?” she says. “What do you like about the city?”

“It was home for a while,” he says. “My dad and I would go to baseball games. My mom and grandmother, my dad and me, we all lived in one of those cramped apartments downtown. It always felt like we were right on top of each other.”

“And you liked it?”

“Yeah,” he says, with a shy smile. “That’s what feels like home.”

She looks at him for a beat, shaking her head before turning her gaze back out towards the busy street.

“What?” he says.

“Sometimes you speak of home like you miss it more than I do,” she says. “Is it so lost to you?”

“Sometimes,” he says.

“Well,” she says, “I hope that you can find your way back.”

“You too.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

Her apartment is in one of those pre-war red brick stalwarts, stretching out across several rooms on the fifth floor. Unlocking the door, she pushes her way inside quickly, fussing for a switch on the wall. When the lights blink on, he whistles through his teeth.

“This is nice,” he says.

She colors. “Do you want the tour?”

“Uh, sure,” he says, slinging off his small bag and setting it against the ground.

She leads him around the apartment quietly, guiding him from room to room. From the entryway to the living room, the kitchen, with little hand gestures towards those rooms with closed doors that he supposes are off limits to him. Her office, her study. The rooms are decorated in deep reds, golds, and browns, but there are no photos, no traces of anyone else’s personal effects. It’s all her.

“Can I ask you something?” he says.

She nods.

“You and me,” he says. “We weren’t…married, were we?”

She smiles. “No,” she says. “We weren’t.”

“Okay,” he says. “That’s one more thing I know.”

“I want to show you something,” she says. “If you’re ready.”

He tips his head in a slight nod, following her through halls and rooms until they reach her office. There’s a small briefcase, and she carefully opens it, gesturing him to come around to her side of the desk. Inlaid inside it is a wide plate of a photograph and, there, he can see himself, standing next to her, their faces somber and still.

“May I?” he asks, and she nods her assent.

He traces their faces with the pad of his finger, sucking in a quick breath when he recognizes Chief standing on the end. This was one of the last times they had all gathered together, and, for all the seriousness of their expressions, it had been more joyful than they had looked, he remembers.

“This was you. And me. That’s Sammy, Charlie, and the Chief.”

He nods, tracking his finger from one face to the other. “Veld,” he says.

“You remember."

“Yeah,” he says. “Or, at least, I think I’m starting to.”

She reaches for his hand and squeezes it. “Time,” she says. “And rest. That’s all you need. It will come back to you.”

“Diana,” he says. “Thank you. For letting me stay with you. You didn’t need to do any of this. It’s just until I figure out…”

“Stay as long as you need,” she says, moving to close and latch the briefcase again. “There is more than enough space.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

He sleeps splayed out on the sofa in her living room, his legs falling over the end of the seat. Outside, the city is alive with noise, cars honking, people filtering out from the bars and restaurants at last call.

He closes his eyes and tries to sleep, seeing only the bright flash of gunfire, the scared faces on the soldiers around him.

Panic seizes his chest, and he takes a deep breath after another, trying to calm himself. He is safe. He is in Diana’s apartment, and nothing about the world is as he remembers. The war—and there was one, wasn’t there, a war that was supposed to be the end of all wars—has ended, and life has marched on the way they always expected it to.

The wind howls between the buildings, and he hears it roar in his ears like the rush of a plane starting to life, drowning out everything around it.

 _There’s no good or bad people in this world, Steve_ , his father once said. _There’s only what you do._

He remembers sprinting up towards the building, gun armed and ready in his hands, ready to fight for her, ready to _fight_ , only to find her on the roof, disappointment and fear in her eyes. He remembers the anger in her face, the hard stone of her rage, the soft brush of her hair against his hands as he tried to reassure himself that she was alive, that she was real, that she was still here.

He remembers holding her and wishing he could still see her face alight with hope at the possibility of what men could do. In all the things he has seen war do, he remembers never wanting to see it change her. Erase her light. Her spirit.

He remembers her face in his hands, remembers wishing he could show her everything that she has shown to him.

He made a choice, knowing that it might not matter anyway.

He chose hope.

He chose the chance for a better world, a world she could believe in. 

He chose to fight the good fight.

 

 

 

 

_Steve!_

 

 

 

 

 

 

A car backfires in the street and he startles awake, the air burning its way in and out of his chest as he struggles to breathe. His hand grips the back of the sofa as he leans his head down between his legs and gasps for air.

The tears burn as the sobs shake his chest, choking its way out of him. He cries so hard he can feel his throat go ragged, the fear and the adrenaline bitter against the back of his tongue.

He forces himself to standing, moving slowly down the hall towards the kitchen when he sees her. Bathed in the dim light of her office, dressed down in her pajamas, just looking at him.

“Steve,” she says. “Are you all right?”

He wipes at his eyes with his hand. “Diana,” he says, approaching her. “Diana.”

She wraps her arms around him, bracing him up as he stumbles, knocking against the wall. His head falls against her shoulder, his arms tightening against her back as he cries.

“I remember,” he whispers. “I remember everything.”

“Steve.”

“I never thought I would see you again.”

“You’re here now,” she says. “You’re safe.”

“Oh, god,” he whispers. “You’re here, Diana. You’re here.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

She sits with him until the dawn. There is a bottle of red wine divided among them, and he drains glass after glass as he tries to collect himself. She fills the silence with stories of their friends, of the years that he has missed.

Charlie has a handful of granddaughters up in Edinburgh, one of whom has trained as a competitive shooter. Sammy never married, but managed to crack a few guest spots on television in his later years. Etta worked for as long as she possibly could, earning herself a distinction in the Second World War, and retired out in the English countryside.

“And what about her family?” he asks. “Do you have any photos of them?”

There are old photo albums rustled from the backs of closets, sepia and yellow-tinged photos showing his friends as they aged through the years. His friends and their homes, their families, surrounded by smiling faces and the promise of a happy future. He feels his eyes tear as he scans through the pages hungrily, desperate to hear their voices again, to see them again.

He presses his fingers to a photo of an older Etta, her hair shock-white and as large as ever, caught in the middle of a laugh.

“She deserves it,” he says. “Whatever medals they gave her, it wasn’t enough.”

A smile ghosts across Diana’s face. “You keep yourselves so bound to the past,” she says. “For all that you talk of looking to the future.”

“You have to look behind you sometimes to know why it is you’re going the way that you’re going,” he says. “And, besides, it’s…been a while.”

She clears her throat. “Yes,” she says. “It has.”

“Are any of them still…”

She shakes her head. “But I can show you where they are,” she says, “if you would like to arrange for a visit.”

He hums, nodding. “That would be nice,” he says. “Thank you.”

“It is a strange thing,” she says. “Needing to mourn the ones who were the ones to lose you.”

There’s a slight tremble to her smile, and he finds himself leaning his weight against her, just to feel how solid she bears up against him. “I’m sorry,” he says.

And she turns to face him, her hands reaching for his. “For what?”

“For all of it,” he says. “It’s no good no matter what side of the problem you’re on.”

She shakes her head. “Death is no end,” she says. “It is only the bridge to something beyond all of our understanding. It is…a passageway.”

He meets her glance and nods. “I wish it could feel that way,” he says. “Instead of how it feels."

She swallows. “I know.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

Steve isn’t built for field command. There are too many boys, young ones, fresh off the farms thinking themselves ready to fight.

He trains them all as best as he can, learns to swallow the bitter lesson that comes with the position. There are some men you have to plan on losing, some men you know will leave who will never return home except in a box.

The first shelling they get out in the French countryside is nothing but a slaughter. And there is a boy, eighteen and crying for his mother, lying in his own blood in a dugout, surrounded by the bodies of the dying.

Steve holds his hand, says what he can remember of the sacraments, and hopes it’s enough to give him peace to pass on.

The boy squeezes his hand tightly, his body shaking with sobs and cold, and presses a golden cross into his hand.

“For my mother, sir,” he gasps, as another round of shells starts to land.

Steve watches a boy die, attends to it, holds his hand while he passes, and thinks only of the needlessness of war. He sends the cross back with the boy’s uniform, and tries not to think of him again after that.

There can be no thinking of his soldiers as men. Not here. Not when every wrong decision threatens to end their lives.

They can be men, or they can be in his command, but not both.

 

 

 

 

 

 

(When he leaves for England, he says, _make me a pilot, sir. Just a pilot_.

When he leaves for England, he takes the names of his dozens of dead with him. Recites their names each night, commits their faces to memory.

It’s the least that they deserve.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Diana gifts him a few of the photos. He revisits them again and again, tracing the contours of their faces, memorizing their expressions, trying to fit them in with the memories he has of them.

Before the war, Etta, smiling, cheerful, breezing into his office with fresh mugs of tea for the both of them and her quick-fire summary of reports and briefs for the morning’s meeting.

Sammy, picking his pocket on the way to the pub for the fun of it, laughing his way through reciting a Shakespearean sonnet.

Charlie, swanning into pub after pub and walking out with a handful of free drinks and somebody else’s date.

It isn’t enough, Steve thinks. There needs to be more.

More than a handful of small photographs and one or two good memories. More than small footnotes about a major battle, or their effort to the war. They were bigger than that, better people than that. They deserve more than the small fragments he’s able to recall from years and years spent living with them, learning from them.

There should be space enough to remember them, as big and loud and bright as they were.

 

 

 

 

 

(“Did you want to see yours?” Diana asked, as she began unpacking his things. “They gave them to us after you—after your plane was discovered.”

He found them in the bottom of the box, carefully wrapped in plastic bags, each labeled with what they were meant to commemorate. His bravery, his valor, his honor.

He pushed them back into the box. “Maybe you can figure out another place for them,” he said. “Another museum, maybe.”

“If you’re sure,” she said.

“It doesn’t seem weird to you?” he said.

She hummed. “It is how they chose to remember you. It’s to give those you left behind something to remember.”

He glanced down at the floor, evading her glance. “Why did you keep them?” he asked.

“I thought,” she began, haltingly, “maybe someday, someone would come asking. Looking for something of yours. So I held onto them…just in case.”)

 

 

 

 

 

 

The first time he visits their graves, he brings gifts. There’s a book of songs for Charlie, a first-edition Noel Coward for Sammy, and a set of Matisse’s prints for Etta.

He sits at the weathered gravestones in the sprawling cemeteries and just listens. For the noise of their laughter on the wind, for the last things he can remember them saying, for the last fragments of their lives, their spirits, in this new world he’s entered.

In his head, he can hear Sammy, see him crawling on top of the nearest rock, the nearest grassy hill, pressing his hand to his heart: _how beauteous mankind is! o brave new world!_

He presses his hand against his mouth and murmurs a prayer.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The second time he visits their graves, he has a partner.

Chief stands silent beside him, his hands tucked into his pockets, just watching.

“You probably think I’m crazy,” he mutters, marching along the path towards the rear of the courtyard.

Chief shakes his head. “It’s not my place to question how you make your peace,” he says. “It’s nobody’s place.”

“How can you be okay with this?” he says. “Any of this?”

The Chief shrugs. “It’s not about how you feel about it,” he says. “No matter how you feel, it isn’t going to change. So all you can do is celebrate their spirit. Who they were and what they meant to you. You carry them with you and you keep going.”

Steve whistles through his teeth. “I don’t know what it is that I’m supposed to be doing,” he says. “I don’t know how you get…reset and, all of a sudden, you’re alive again.”

The Chief laughs. “You think too much,” he says.

“So, what,” he says, scoffing, “What do you do?”

“Keep it simple, man,” Chief says, knocking him once in the arm. “You were given another chance. To do what, I don’t know. You don’t know either. But you really going to look a horse like that in the mouth?”

“When my mom died, all I could think about was how I wanted one more minute with her,” he says. “But you never really think about what it would mean for her if she got one.”

“Be careful what you wish for,” Chief says. “Isn’t that what all your stories say?”

“I don’t know how this is supposed to go now,” he says.

“It’s not supposed to be anything,” Chief says. “It’s just what it is.”

He snorts.

“Or maybe I’m shitting you, and you’ll never know.”

“That’s real nice, Chief,” he says, with a laugh. “Thanks.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

He doesn’t sleep that night.

He spends half of the time tossing and turning, hoping to fall asleep, and the rest of it sitting by the window, keeping vigil over an empty street.

He can’t stop thinking about his parents, about the last words they ever said to him, the last things they ever left him with. Nothing more than a watch and a handful of good memories in a small apartment, but enough to hold onto.

He runs his fingers over the old pictures, and wishes he had something more. To remember them by, to keep.

He remembers the weight of his mother’s hands resting against his shoulders on the day they buried his father. _Sometimes, Stevie, what you get is what you get_.

In his collection of photos, Etta peers down at a map covering half a desk, her expression serious and unsmiling. He runs his thumb over her face, half-hidden by shadow, and aches to hear the sound of her snorting laugh again, the way she’d roll her eyes and use his title whenever she was feeling irritated.

He thinks about calling Diana. (Doesn’t.)

How can he step back into a life he’s already said goodbye to, made his peace with? How can he turn to a woman he’s loved more than a great many other things, other people, in his life and expect that a hundred years has been as stagnant for her as it has been for him?

 _Sometimes, Stevie, what you get is what you get_.

He leans back against the wall and lets his head thud back against it.

What he’s got is a migraine, an empty bank account, and the most complicated relationship of his life.

 

 

 

 

 

All of his things are gone when he returns, the living room neatened and tidied again. He holds the apartment key in his hand, feeling the grooves of it digging into his palm. “Diana?” he says.

She marches out of her office, pencil gripped between her teeth, peering with frustration at her phone. “I _told_ you,” she says, “that those cannot be appraised until they’ve been effectively restored. There’s no way that we can get a proper determination of…oh, let me call you back. I’ll call you back.”

“Hi,” he says. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know you were on a call.”

She waves her hand. “Tom FaceTimes me more than is necessary.”

Steve furrows his brow. “He… _what_?”

“How are you doing?” she asks.

“Listen,” he says, “I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to get everything in order, but just give me a few more weeks and I’ll find another place.”

She tilts her head, staring at him. “What are you talking about?”

He gestures at the room. “I just thought that since…”

She shakes her head. “I wanted to talk to you,” she says. “You cannot go on sleeping on the sofa out here.”

“I know,” he says, “but, like I said, just give me a few more weeks to line something up, and I’ll…pay you for the back rent and everything.”

“It’s bad for your back,” she says, simply.

He scoffs. “What?”

“You’re too tall for it, and you’re going to end up hurting your back,” she says. “You can’t keep sleeping there. I’ve moved your things into my room.”

His mouth drops, hanging open. “Diana, I don’t think…”

“I rarely sleep there,” she says. “It is no trouble to me, I promise you.”

He reaches for her hands. “I’m sorry that this…is what it is,” he says. “I’m sure you didn’t expect me to drop right out of the sky and have to deal with this, but…you really don’t need to do this, Diana. I’m fine on the sofa. I can sleep on the floor.”

She clicks her tongue. “The third night I met you, we shared a bed on our way off of the island,” she says. “This is no different.”

He hums, a high-pitched noise of disagreement. “Mm, I’d say this is very different,” he says. “This isn’t a sailboat in danger of capsize—"

“It was _not_ in danger of capsizing—"

“—and it’s your bedroom, and I wouldn’t want to be…in the way—"

“—and it’s not like we haven’t slept together before. What do you mean in the way?”

He colors, licking his lips. “Diana,” he says. “It’s been a literal _century_.”

“And here you are, still fighting me on this,” she says, with a wry smile. “You said it yourself. We do not need to be married before you can sleep with me. And you are not in the way. If you are, I will simply ask you to move.”

“Ask me,” he repeats, exhaling through his teeth. “All right.”

She squeezes his hand. “You are not in the way,” she repeats, more firmly. “I don’t lie. And I act only as I choose. And what I choose is to ask you to sleep in a real bed.”

His eyebrows arch. “ _Your_ bed.”

She shrugs. “Yes.”

“Diana.”

She moves towards him, her shoulder bumping his. “Steve.”

He sighs. “Diana, all I’m saying is…”

“You trust me, yes?” she asks.

“Yes,” he says. “Of course. You know that.”

“Trust that I know what it is I’m asking, what it is I’m choosing. If you would not like to, that’s one matter. But…”

“It would be better than the sofa,” he says. “I just don’t want to…intrude.” His gaze flicks down to her mouth. A passing glance, but one she catches.

“What are you afraid of?” she whispers. “I’m right here.”

“All right,” he says, stepping back, his hands raised in surrender. “All right, all right, you win. I’ll take the room.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

The last time he remembers sleeping with her was on the rocky ground in the woods a few miles away from German high command.

The last time he remembers sleeping with her, they were bundled up in layers of sweaters, sleeping on top of thick Army blankets and barely sleeping at all. The war was on the forefront of his mind, just as Ares had been on the forefront of hers. They had lain awake beside each other, thinking of their next moves, their strategies, the best way to achieve peace.

He remembers watching her, sensing the intensity of her thoughts through her absolute silence, by the focus and brightness of her eyes as she stared up ahead at the canopy of the tent.

They didn’t talk much that night.

They didn’t do much of anything.

She rolled onto her side and pressed her body against his, just breathing. Nothing like the soft bed at the inn in Veld. Nothing like the shyness and sweetness of learning the contours of her body for the first time, of sleeping together in respite against whatever may be coming.

He remembers the hard edge of the ground digging into his body, and the softness of hers curled up against him. It was like his first time sleeping in the trenches, he thought, all of the hardness of the world around him and then, somehow, a pocket of light. Somebody’s letter from home, somebody’s smuggled photo from a magazine, somebody’s bottle of liquor and somebody’s scratchy voice singing a song. The noise of cannon fire only making it that much more powerful, that much more delicate.

The skin of her arms was smooth beneath his hands, her hair heavy with the fragrance of the woods, and he tried to memorize it, to hold onto it all because it wasn’t the weight of everything else. It wasn’t the feeling of the ground pushing back against him, wasn’t the threat of the hard choices that needed to be made the next day, wasn’t anything other than warmth and wholeness.

He closed his eyes, but didn’t sleep, holding onto her for as long as he could, keeping time to the cadence of her breathing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

That night, he sleeps in Diana’s room.

It’s heavy with her presence, with the scent of her. There are still outfits from earlier that week cast off against the backs of chairs, shoes carelessly tried and discarded near the bottom of the bed.

He lies down on the firm mattress beneath the comfortable sheets, and tries not to think of her lying there beside him. (In Veld, her face, showered with the light of the morning, hidden from him by the expanse of her bare back. The line of her spine curving away from him, her hair mussed from his hands and from sleep, pushing back against the pillows.

These are the things it’d be easier to avoid thinking about, if they hadn’t…

Well, if they hadn’t.)

Diana knocks on the door twice. “Do you need anything?”

He turns onto his side stiffly, staring out at the night sky through the window. “Nope,” he replies. “Thank you?”

“Try to get some sleep,” she says. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

Her body is soft beneath his, her head arched back against the pillow as he kisses his way down her neck. Her breasts are full in the palms of his hands, and she rocks against him as he smooths his thumbs over the sensitive flesh of her nipples.

She gasps, murmuring his name, her legs parting even further so that he can settle his weight between them.

“I missed you,” she murmurs, smiling around his kiss, wet and clumsy.

“I missed you too,” he replies, sinking his fingers inside of her. She’s just as he remembers, the muscles of her core pulsing tight around him as he begins to move them. “You don’t know how much.” Her skin is flushed pink with desire, her eyes rolling back into her head as her hips push forward, straining for leverage, to drive him deeper.

She stretches her hand forward, grazing his erection. “I think I know,” she rasps.

“Diana,” he groans, his thumb circling her clit as he hooks his fingers.

She shudders, rocking faster against his fingers, and he increases his pressure, watching her face as she draws close.

“I want to see you,” he pants, kissing her. She tastes like sea, sweet and salt against the tip of his tongue. “Come on, Diana.”

Her eyes meet his as he curls his fingers, and she gasps his name.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Steve wakes in her bed, his hand already wrapped around his hard cock, his other arm reaching out towards the empty side of the bed.

He groans, huffing a breath.

“Great,” he mutters. “Fantastic.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

For all that he knows about Diana, living with her means learning something new, means finding another rhythm and keeping out of her way.

For one thing, she isn’t really a morning person or a night person, mostly because he rarely sees her sleep. There are a few occasions—after a long week of meetings, or a series of battles—when she is too exhausted to do anything other than collapse into bed beside him and sleep, even without changing out of her uniform.

For another, she always manages to keep food in the house. And bottles upon bottles of wine. For guests, if for nothing else.

There is always coffee set to brew in the pot, and it is the first thing that anyone should switch on or touch in the morning. The _first_ thing. Even—or especially—if morning begins at four, before the sun has risen in the sky.

There are days when she locks herself in her office, working and speaking non-stop with just about every organization he’s ever heard of. There are charities and non-profit organizations, museums and antiquities dealers, the United Nations and foreign governments. Some days, he sets out plates of sandwiches outside the door, just because he knows she’s got to eat sometime.

There are days when she leaves that untouched, too, when his plates collect outside the closed office door, waiting for her.

“Diana,” he finds himself saying, again and again, “You have to eat _sometime_.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

He cooks her dinner one night as a thank you. It’s nothing simple—his mother’s recipe for meatloaf with about half the meat it calls for, and an extra helping of mashed potatoes on the side—but she sits down with him to eat it anyway.

“I didn’t know that you knew how,” she says, around a full mouthful.

He pours them both red wine, and he watches as she sets aside the enormous policy paper she needs to read for tomorrow’s meeting. “I don’t know how you can do everything that you do without eating,” he says.

She shrugs. “There is a lot to be done. But thank you. This is very good.”

“It isn’t as good as my mom’s,” he says. “Or probably anything you could pay to have delivered, but I thought that…since you’ve put me up for a while, it was time for me to thank you…properly.”

“Well,” she says, sipping at her wine. “You’re welcome.”

“I’ve been trying to find something,” he says, “But it turns out there isn’t much for an ex-military with no computer skills out there.”

She wrinkles her brow. “Do you need help?”

He shakes his head. “I’ve been taking classes,” he says. “Library. Picking it up as I go. You know.”

“Hmm,” she says. “Maybe I should get you a cell phone."

“Diana,” he says. “It’s fine.”

“What if I need to reach you?” she says.

“You’ll…light a smoke signal or something. You’ll find me.”

“Steve.”

“Diana, really,” he says. “I’m making my way. Just like everybody else.”

“You helped me when I first came here,” she says. “I don’t know why you won’t let me help you.”

“You _have_ helped me,” he says. “More than you know. More than I could ever repay you for. I’m just trying to…close the gap a little bit.”

“Maybe…” she says, “Maybe you could work for me.”

His fork clinks noisily against his plate. “What, seriously?”

She nods. “I have been looking for an assistant. It’s entry-level. Won’t pay very well, although that’s more to do with the funding than with me. And it would give you a place to start.”

“Really?” he says. “You’re not just making this up to help out an old friend.”

She takes his hand. “Steve,” she says. “I never lie.”

“Oh, that’s right,” he says, with a small smile, “Of course, you never lie. I always forget that.”

“You should consider my offer,” she says. “I’ll talk to my department about it.”

“I don’t have any skills,” he says. “It wouldn’t be fair. There must be somebody else.”

“Well,” she says. “Maybe, but there are things you know about me that I would never be able to share with any other assistant. You would be of more help than you may think.”

“So, what?” he says. “Your secretary.”

She grins at him. “Why?” she says. “Anything wrong with that?”

 

 

 

 

 

 

So he’s her secretary.

(Actually, they’re called _assistants_ now.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

There’s an adjustment period.

But really, it’s less the assisting part that he has problems with than it is the _screens_. There are _so many_ of them. There’s ones that you carry and ones in the train station; there’s ones for directions and ones for work and ones for fun; there’s no escaping them, and, somehow, everyone takes this as a good thing.

Fast-forward a hundred years, and it seems like just about every answer boils down to how quickly you can send a message to a thinking machine that can tell you just about everything you need to know.

(They call it the _Google_.

Diana keeps telling him to drop the article, but there’s no way that can make sense. _Google_ is the name of the machine that they use; he’s pretty sure he read that somewhere.)

The other assistants at the office watch him with a mixture of horror and infinite patience, but he’s typed enough in his life to not be _that_ horrible at it. (He isn’t great, but who would have thought that everyone would be doing their grocery shopping and banking from a machine?)

Mostly he keeps track of her electronic mail and her calendar, all of which seems to take up most of his time.

There’s even a work phone: a square brick of a thing that turns on, takes pictures of his face, dials other people. Part-telephone, part-machine, and all confusing.

Grant, the kid at the office, shows him what to tap to open it up. “You can use your fingerprint, if you want,” he says, tapping his way into settings.

“Wait, wait, _what_?” Steve says. He turns the phone over in his hand, looks at the back of it. “You can use your what?”

Grant sighs. “How do you want to set up your password?”

He pulls the phone free from the kid’s grasp. “Just—I’ll figure it out,” he says.

“Just remember that you don’t need to hit it _hard_ ,” Grant says. “It’s sensitive.”

“Sensitive,” he says, jabbing at it with his thumb. “I got it.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

She’s halfway through a conference call, her head leaning against her hands in irritation, when he steps in, dropping a greasy bag on top of the corner of the desk.

She glances up at him, scribbling a line onto her sheaf of notes and switching the phone onto mute.

“What is this?” she asks.

“You cancelled,” he says. “And I figured you still needed to eat.”

“Did you get for yourself too?”

“Don’t worry about me,” he says. “I ate.”

She tears open the bag, pulling free a cheeseburger and a dish of French fries.

“Whatever they’re telling you, you don’t look too happy about it,” he says.

She waves for him to sit, taking a large bite of the burger. “They speak to hear themselves talk,” she says.

“The more things change, the more they stay the same, I guess,” he says.

She smiles and pushes the dish of fries towards him. “You should have some.”

“I brought them for you,” he says.

“How are you doing?” she says. “With all of this?”

“I’m going to be a little slow with the machines,” he says. “I think you know that and I know that. But the rest of it, it’s stuff I know how to handle.”

“Is that so?”

“Yeah,” he says. “I think so, anyway.”

“ _Please_ ,” a voice over the speakerphone blares, “If you’re not willing to be civil about this…”

“I think I need to get back on,” she says. “But thank you for the burger.”

He begins to collect the scraps of garbage into the bag, taking it with him.

“Hey, Steve?” she says.

He glances up.

“See you at home?”

His face warms. “Yeah,” he says.

She swipes the mute button before he can think to say anything else.

 

 

 

 

 

 

She comes home after midnight, her suit rumpled, her hair loose around her shoulders. He’s sitting in the living room, paging through her reports for the next day.

“You’re still up,” she says. “You didn’t need to wait for me.”

He rubs at the back of his neck. “I had nothing better to do.”

“Sleep?” she says, with a smile. “You must be exhausted.”

“You want something to eat?” he says. “There’s some leftover Chinese, I think.”

She shakes her head and sighs loudly. “I just need a shower,” she says. “And to lie down for a very long time.”

“Glass of wine?” he says, moving to sit on the sofa. “Whiskey?”

She sits down beside him, leaning her weight against him and yawning. “No,” she says. “This is nice.”

“This is nice?"

His arm comes down to rest across her shoulders, his hand pressing against the knots in the muscle. She shifts against him with a soft groan, and he kneads at the knot, feeling it begin to loosen against his touch.

“Mmm,” she hums. “This is nice.”

His hand brushes against the ends of her hair, scratching lightly at the base of her neck. She leans into him, stretching slightly as she relaxes against him.

“You should stay,” she murmurs.

He smiles. “I’m not going anywhere.”

She turns to look at him, her eyes heavy with sleep. “I want you to stay,” she says. “I know that you think things are different, that _I’m_ different, but…”

“Hey,” he whispers, his thumb ghosting against her cheek. “I’m not going anywhere.”

Her eyes fall closed and she burrows harder against him. “It was so hard…losing you,” she whispers. “To know that I would never see you again. And after what you said…” Her speech begins to slow, her body beginning to sink into sleep.

“It was hard to say goodbye,” he says. “Especially to you.”

She mumbles an answer in her sleep.

 

 

 

 

 

 

He carries her into the bedroom, laying her carefully on the bed.

She rolls onto her side as he settles her against the mattress, throwing her arm out against the empty space.

When he slips into bed beside her, she sighs, moving to curl up against him.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Their first night on the boat, they barely spoke, letting the noise of the waves lapping at the sides fill the silence as they rocked back and forth across the sea. They broke up the routine of the passage by occasionally rising to check on the sails and the steering, navigating around each other and intermittently sparking small tidbits of conversation. Little things.

He remembers she dreamt a lot that night, muttering furiously in a foreign language under her tongue as she slept, her arms and legs fidgeting against the wooden planking.

He laid there beside her, pressing a hand to her shoulder to try to get her to still.

He watched her a lot that first night as she moved around the boat, as she navigated, keeping vigil at the wheel, at the sails. As she struggled against whatever choices she was making, whatever choices she had already made. He understood. Well, he thought he understood.

It must be hard enough to come to terms with leaving home, much less knowing everything that comes with a trip to the battlefield. For all that she committed herself to making the fight, to seeing him where he needed to go, he knew—as he knew the others on the island did—that there was a part of her that hadn’t seen the kinds of things they all had, that hadn’t yet witnessed the creative brutality war had to offer.

If he had been the kind of person that still made promises to mothers, he would have tried. Not that she would have believed him—what Amazon queen would?—but he would have tried.

But it was 1918, and Steve had already risen through the ranks, lived and learned, and there were no promises to mothers that he could have stomached, none that he could claim to try to keep.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

He dreams of the boat now, of sailing with her on the sea again. This time, it isn’t to leave the island, it isn’t to run to a war, but just because she loves the water, and he loves her. The sails are up, the two of them floating along the water out into the deep ocean, and she’s grinning, her skin flecked with drops of seawater, her hair damp and drying in the midday sun.

He squints up at her through the sunlight. “You got to wear your sunscreen,” he says, sliding a pair of sunglasses onto her face.

She pins him down against the deck of the boat, settling herself on top of him as she leans down to give him a kiss. “Where are we going?”

“Wherever you want,” he says.

Her shoulders are bronze in the sun, her back warm against his hands. She drapes herself over him, biting lightly at the side of his neck as she undoes the strings of her bathing suit top. “Maybe you can help me,” she says, smiling against his mouth. “It’s hard to apply it all evenly.”

“I don’t think you’re being fair to yourself,” he says.

“Don’t go anywhere,” she whispers.

His hands span her hips, holding her in place. “Where would I go?”

 

 

 

 

 

 

He wakes with a handful of her in his arms, her legs twined with his, her hair shoved back against his face, her ass pressed against his half-hard cock. She groans as she stretches, grinding back against him and he stifles a moan.

“Diana,” he whispers, pushing her gently away from him. “Just…move a little bit…”

He clambers out of bed, darting quickly into the bathroom as she yawns.

“Good morning,” she says, brightly, as he shuts and locks the bathroom door behind him. “You slept well? Steve?”

“Just going to take a shower!” he calls.

She knocks her hand once against the door. “I hope you didn’t mind my sleeping with you last night,” she says. “I have a 7 a.m., so I’ll see you at the office?”

“Great,” he calls. “I’ll see you there.”

“Bring the coffee!"

 

 

 

 

 

 

Give a man a hundred years, and he can reinvent the cup of coffee.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The last time they had coffee, it was cold army rations, mixed over and over with chicory, heated over the campfire. They drank it out of small metal cups, tasting nothing of coffee and more of charcoal and sludge.

She had sipped it down anyway, down to the very bottom, thanking Chief for all he had done.

“She’s a hardy one if she can stomach this shit,” Charlie grimaced, swallowing it down and chucking the cup aside.

“Hey, hey, hey,” Steve replied. “That’s courtesy of her royal majesty, the Queen.”

“Well, she can kiss my ass,” Charlie grunted. “If you expect me to run on that shit.”

“Is he all right?” Diana said. “Having a reaction to the drink?”

Sammy laughed, shaking his head. “Nothing to worry about, Diana,” he said. “That’s just how he is in the morning.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“This can’t possibly be right.”

Chief smiles beside him. “Picking up the boss’s coffee, cowboy?”

“Shut up,” he says. “You’re telling me this is right?”

In front of him is a menu with a truly insane number of options, all of which are pretending to be some kind of coffee.

“This can’t all be coffee.”

“They’re coffee-derived,” Chief says. “Close enough to the real thing.”

“In a hundred years, and you all ruin coffee.”

“Don’t look at me,” Chief says. “It wasn’t my people.”

“Right,” Steve says. “Of course. Now, what the hell do I get?”

Chief shrugs. “Why don’t you ask the lady at the counter? She seems helpful.”

“Remind me why I’m friends with you,” he says.

“Because I’m the only one you got?” he says. “Now, you going to go order your boss her coffee, or you going to make me do it for you?”

“Will you just let me do it?”

Chief raises his hands. “All right, so do it.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

He brings her a whipped cream and foam monstrosity with caramel syrup and four shots of espresso.

She sighs when she sips it, waving him into her office.

“Good?” he says. “It was my first time ordering it, and, uh, I wasn’t sure…”

“Thank you,” she says. “Did you get anything for yourself?”

“Just a coffee,” he says. “Seems a crime to charge that much for it.”

She laughs. “Good?”

He tilts his head. “A little burnt,” he says. “Otherwise, it’s all right.”

“You want to try mine?” she says, offering her cup out to him.

He takes it from her, and tries a sip. The paper cup is marked with a lipstick print, the coffee sliding into his mouth, frothy and overly-sweet.

He grimaces.

“Good?” she says, laughing.

He coughs.

She stands, leaning in to brush at the thin trace of foam left on his lip with her finger. He sucks in a breath, his eyes falling to her mouth as he waits for her to move.

“I should go,” he says.

She leans in and kisses him, her hand sliding against his as she takes back the cup. “Thank you,” she whispers, pulling away.

He clears his throat, glancing down at the floor. “Anytime.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

The other assistants stare at him as he exits her office, his cold coffee in hand, face pinked with color.

“You all right, dude?” Grant asks.

“I’m fine,” he snaps.

“You look sick.”

“I’m fine,” he repeats.

 

 

 

 

 

 

He ducks in to see Diana before he leaves for the evening. It’s eight o’clock, and most of the other assistants have trickled home or out to their personal lives.

She smiles when she sees him, her fingers moving quickly across the keyboard as she answers another email.

“I just wanted to let you know that the Grecian Ambassador called again to request a budget meeting, and Guanilo Perez asked for an audience with you. Again.”

“Are you going home?”

“After this?” he says. “Yeah, I was planning on it. Why? You want me to stick around?”

She shakes her head, rising out of her chair to approach him. Her arms slide over his shoulders, her hands linking behind his neck. “Set up Greece for Tuesday. Move whatever around that you have to. And tell Guanilo Perez that I am not friendly with tyrants until they are willing to discuss freeing their people.”

“That is what I told him,” he says. “More or less. But I will tell him again.”

“Thank you,” she says, kissing him.

“Ambassador,” he says, quietly.

She hums with pleasure low in her throat.

“We are still in your office,” he says.

“Home then,” she says. “I won’t be long.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

That night, as he’s brushing his teeth, he’s struck by the sight of her, going through the motions of her nighttime routine. There’s a mess of creams and products around him, her gaze focused on her reflection in the mirror as she swipes the day’s makeup off. Smudges of brown, gold, and black smear against the corners of her eyes and cheeks. She wipes her hands on a washcloth, glancing at her reflection briefly when she turns and meets his stare.

“What?” she says.

“Diana, what are we doing?”

“What?” she says, wiping at her face with a washcloth.

“I mean…all of this,” he says. “I’m living with you, I’m working for you, and we’re—I mean, I know how I feel about you, I think you know how I feel about you, but I don’t know… what’s supposed to be…next.”

“What do you mean ‘next’?” she says.

He spits in the sink, rinsing his mouth and toothbrush. “I mean… I know where we _were_ before all of this, before I came back from the dead, but now…”

“Steve,” she says. “Nothing has changed.”

He shakes his head. “You can’t just come back from the dead after a hundred years and say that nothing has changed. Lots of things have changed. Planes don’t have propellers anymore. I can order food on the computer. You’re like…a head of state. And…”

She laughs. “I was a head of state before.”

“Princess,” he says. “It’s different.”

“Steve,” she says, reaching to grip his arms. “What is this about?”

He lifts his head, his hands drumming against his sides. “Let me take you out.”

Her hands drop to her side. “I’m…sorry?”

“I mean,” he says, taking a breath, “let me…take you out. Dinner. Something.”

“You want to…take me out? To dinner?” she repeats, slowly. “It’s eleven at night.”

“You know what I mean.”

She finishes washing her face. “I’m afraid I don’t.”

“I don’t know what you’re supposed to do when you’ve done what we have, and start all over again,” he says. “I’m used to just…you take someone out on a date, they kiss you if they want to, they don’t if they don’t, and, sooner or later, you start to figure things out.”

Patting her face dry with a towel, she tosses it behind her on the sink counter. “You want to figure things out,” she repeats. “With us.”

“Yes,” he says.

She steps towards him and kisses him. He pulls her into him, his tongue licking into her mouth as her hands slide into his hair.

When she pulls away, he’s panting, his nose nudging along hers.

“I didn’t know that things were so confusing,” she says. “I kiss you because I want to. You kiss me back because you want to.”

“Yes,” he says.

“What’s confusing?”

“Everything,” he says. “Look, let me take you out. Maybe a dinner, maybe a dance.”

She kisses him again. “We can do that here.”

“We could, yes,” he whispers. “But I want to take you out, if that’s what you want.”

“All right,” she says. “Dinner.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

The truth is their first date is warm beer after a day’s shelling in Veld, Edith Piaf playing on the staticky radio, Charlie’s brogue cutting through the air. He remembers holding her, remembers the smell of snow on the air, remembers the look of her face in the dim lighting of the inn.

The truth is he’s never really been a first date kind of guy. They’ve felt a little too much like military interviews, smiling for the ID photos and detailing your basic roster sheet of facts and hoping to make it to the next round.

But Diana’s Diana, and he wants to show her the world. Not just what parts he can afford of it, not just what she’s already seen, but parts of his own story, parts of his own life, the places he would like to see through her eyes.

It’s too much pressure for a date already, but he figures that’s just the going rate when you know you already love the girl.

(He’s never been one for doing things in the right order.

Bail on the war, grow a conscience, join late.

Fall in love with a girl, sleep with her, take her on a date.

It’s a flaw of character.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

He takes her to a hole-in-the-wall Italian spot that’s been around for generations and generations. (The sauce doesn’t taste as sweet as he remembers, but he figures maybe some things get lost in translation from generation to generation.)

There are red-and-white checkered tablecloths, wood-fired ovens, and tables so small their legs are practically pushed up against each other while they sit.

“Have you ever been here?” he says, his stomach roiling with nerves.

“No,” she says. “I can’t say that I have.”

They get the house red, two pasta dishes, and spend the night slowly making their way through a bottle of wine. She already knows so many things about him, but he can’t stop telling her more of his stories. The first time he met Sammy, the first time he got in trouble at school, his first girlfriend.

Her smile is arch as she refills his glass. “I bet you were a terror,” she says.

He shrugs. “No more than anyone else,” he says.

“Oh, I’m sure,” she replies.

She splits the bill with him, and he leads her out with his hand on the small of her back.

When she pulls him into the alleyway, he grins. “What did you think?”

She links her arms around his neck, pulling him back with her as she backs herself against the wall. “So this is what passes for courtship in your country?”

He closes his eyes, leaning into her touch. “It is the traditionally accepted method, yes.”

“Interesting,” she whispers, leaning in to kiss him. “On Themyscira, we are much more direct.”

“Yes?” he murmurs, wrapping his arms around her.

Her hands cup his face as she licks into his mouth. His hand slides into her hair, his body pressing hers up against the wall as he pins her with his hips, grinning against her mouth as she groans at the pressure, at the contact. It has been too many weeks of living around each other, of being around her, without this, he thinks, and it still isn’t enough.

She gasps between kisses, stumbling slightly in her heeled shoes. “As I take you to me, so you are mine, if you are willing,” she says, pulling him closer by the belt loops of his pants. “Direct.”

He pulls away, his eyes falling to her swollen lips, her lipstick smudged across her mouth. “I wanted to take you out,” he says. “It means I—well, I don’t know what it means. It means I want you to know that I care about you. That I...want to be with you, for as long as you’ll have me.”

She tilts her head. “To love, honor, and cherish, until death?”

“You proposing marriage to me, Diana?” he says, his fingers trailing along the bare skin of her thigh. The skirt of her dress is shorter than he’s used to—and, _God_ , does he appreciate how short it is—and his fingertips tease, tracing patterns against the surface of her skin.

“No,” she says, her voice high and breathless. “I do not think it suits me. But…”

He ducks his head, brushing a kiss against her shoulder. “But?”

She doesn’t answer, leaning forward to kiss him again. Her nose bumps against his as her mouth seeks his out, and he shoves her skirt up, plying her knees apart as his hands skim against her hip.

He moves his mouth to her neck, his tongue hot as it swipes against her skin, tasting salt, tasting _her_ , and she pants against him. “Do you know how much I’ve thought about this?” he whispers. “How much I think about you falling apart against my fingers, my mouth, about tasting you again?”

She whines, pulling him up to kiss her as she reaches for his hand. “I think I know,” she whispers, dragging his hand underneath her skirt. And then his fingers are pressed against her panties, feeling the slickness of her already, even through the fabric. “I think about you, too.”

“God,” he hisses, circling her with his fingers. “Diana.”

Her hand digs in against his shoulder. “You don’t know,” she breathes, “how much I have wanted you.”

He wants to bury himself inside of her, wants to tell her every thought that’s racing through his mind about how wet she is, how he can’t get the sound of her keening out of his head, how he wants to breathe her, taste her, open her up, but he’s also very aware of decency laws and the dozen or so that they’re probably breaking right now.

He shoves her underwear to the side and pushes a finger inside of her, kissing her as she slides her eyes shut with a soft hiss.

“More,” she gasps.

He pulls his finger free, sinking two fingers inside of her this time, feeling her muscles clench hot around them. Her eyes are dark, her hair tangling as it scrapes up against the wall. He pumps his fingers inside of her, feeling her hips cant up against his hand, her back arching to push him deeper.

The noise of her breathing grows loud in the space between them. He leans his forehead against hers, his body shielding her lower half from view as he drives his fingers inside of her, his thumb rubbing slickly against her flesh.

“Oh, shit,” she swears, and all he wants to do is hear her like this, mind fogged with desire, demanding. Pleading. “Steve.”

He sinks his fingers in deep, curling them inside of her, his mouth biting against her neck.

She comes with a sharp gasp, her hand tightening against his shoulder as her hips tremble against his hand.

The smell of her is all over him, her wetness soaking his hand. He draws his fingers into his mouth, licking them clean. She tastes like he remembers, all tang and salt, and he’s so hard he aches.

She watches him with wide eyes, her body trembling as she smooths down her skirt.

“I think it’s time to take you home,” she rasps.

“Yes,” he says. “Let’s go home.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

It isn’t what you might expect, the idyllic end to the first date, sex and the promise of a weekend stretching out in front of them.

They go home, she turns a movie onto her TV ( _amazing_ , Steve thinks, _the things that people can do with a hundred years and a capacity for boredom_ ), and she falls asleep with her legs draped over his lap, his hands cupping the side of her ankle.

There is another bottle of wine that they drink their way through, and her loose hair, thick and messy, presses flush against his neck.

There is the gurgling noise of Diana’s scratchy snore, the warmth of her body burning through his, the intimate flicker of the light from the tv washing over them.

He lets her sleep, watching the rise and fall of her chest, studying the curl of her fingers against his body, and can’t remember the last time he’s ever felt so comfortable. 

Home, he thinks, is a good feeling.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

She stirs halfway into an infomercial about a military-designed flashlight just made available to the public. “What happened,” she mumbles. “To the toys?”

He smiles. “They found their way back.”

“I’m sorry,” she says, climbing off of him. “You should have woken me.”

“I’ll clean up,” he says. “You should go to bed.”

“What time is it?” she winces.

“It’s Saturday,” he says. “You don’t have any calls today, you don’t have a meeting until Monday, and you deserve a break. You need one.”

She groans. “Maybe you should make some coffee.”

“You can’t save the world if you’re tired, Diana,” he says.

She waves her hand dismissively at him.

 

 

 

 

 

 

(“So, what?” Grant says, rolling his eyes. “You took this girl out, and _actually_ just Netflix’d and chilled?”

Steve stares at him. “It’s like you’re not even speaking English.”

“Whatever, man,” Grant says. “You got to learn how to seal a deal sometime. I mean, you aren’t even that old.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“Google it, Trevor,” Grant says. “I know you know what _that_ is.”)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Their second date is a work function.

Technically, it’s _her_ work function. He’s just along for the ride. An end-of-the-quarter gala meant to raise money for the charity organization, all black tie generosity at $15,000.00 a plate.

“Got to love New York,” he says, whistling as he reads the invitation.

“You’re coming with me,” she says.

“Am I now?” he says. “I’m not exactly the black tie type.”

“You could lie your way into German high command, you can lie your way to these aristocrats,” she says. “They’d like to think that money makes them powerful.”

“And what do you think?”

“I think that I can get them to give a lot of money,” she says, “and the more that we raise, the more we can help.”

“Don’t worry,” he says. “The ambassador’s assistant goes where she needs him.”

She quirks a smile. “My assistant?” she says.

“Well,” he replies, “I don’t think it’d exactly be appropriate for me to show up as your date.”

She breathes an exaggerated sigh. “I suppose you’re right.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

The first time a girl ever made him feel like he’d been punched in the gut, it was a girl who had punched him in the gut. Sylvia Brassano, the dark-haired tomboy from down the block, who came to dinner with her parents. It was an old dress, inherited from a cousin of hers out in Long Island, but man, did he notice the way it hugged her developing curves, the way her hair pulled up drew attention to the sloping line of her neck.

He remembers his mother hitting him and telling him not to stare.

He remembers wondering just how he could have known her for so long and never seen her like this. He remembers wondering where she was hiding. 

“Wow,” he said.

“That’s all you got to say to me?” Sylvia had sneered. “‘Wow’?”

“Yeah,” he said. “I mean, what else do you want?”

 

 

 

 

 

 

At German high command, there had been other things to think of: the mission, the end of the war, the threat of Dr. Maru. And still, he felt the landing of the same punch, the air going out of him, the room growing warm and small compared to the sight of her—a beacon in a blue dress.

Even in her anger, her righteousness, he couldn’t pull his eyes from the sight of her in that dress, the way the fabric hung on her curves, on her sinewy muscle, reminding him of the woman lingering beneath the warrior.

(It was easy to forget that, sometimes, amid the clang of metal and the bursting shells and bullets. That she was a woman, and not just a force to be reckoned with, a divine fury, a faceless Spartan warrior. That she could sing and smile and laugh. That she could be as soft as much as she was anything else.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Her dress this time is a deep red, the shoulder straps made of gold jewel pieces, with a deep neckline and open back.

He stares longer than he means to. “Wow,” he says.

She turns to him, her hands fussing with pulling her hair up into style. “I’ll tie that for you,” she says. “And I need you to help me with the zipper.”

He swallows, his eyes tracking down the length of her open back, watching the muscle ripple and move as she struggles with her hair. “Sure,” he says. “Of course.”

As she finishes, she spritzes perfume along the column of her neck before she moves towards him, turning around to bare her back to him. “The zipper,” she says. “Be careful. It sticks sometimes.”

He settles one hand against her lower back, the other reaching for the tag of the zipper and pulling it up gently. He can feel the rhythm of her breathing against his hands, her perfume heavy in the air between them.

Once it’s closed, he clears his throat. “All done.”

“Your turn,” she says. She doesn’t move from her position near him, only turning to face him, her eyes bright with humor, her mouth just a touch away from his. She slides her hands up the lapels of his jacket, looping the silk of the bow tie around his collar. She moves languidly, easily, her hands looping the fabric into the proper knot.

He settles his hands around her waist, humming as her fingers graze the sides of his throat.

“You look beautiful,” he says.

“So do you,” she says, finishing off the knot. She tilts her head up to look at him, her hands brushing at the invisible dust on his shoulders.

He leans in and kisses her, his hand cupping her cheek as he deepens the kiss. “I love you, you know.”

She smiles against his mouth, and he swears he can almost taste her joy. “I know.”

“We better go,” he says. “You’re the guest of honor. Wouldn’t be great if you showed up late.”

“Promise me a dance?” she says.

He kisses the corner of her mouth. “You know we shouldn’t.”

She hums. “Should has nothing to do with it,” she says. “What I do is my business alone.”

“I think that stopped being true when you got into politics.”

“Diplomacy,” she sighs, “is not politics.”

“A dance is not diplomacy,” he says.

“Maybe not with you,” she replies.

 

 

 

 

 

 

He spends the gala milling around the wall with the other assistants and staff, all of them in their early twenties and glued to their phones, gulping down flutes of champagne for dinner.

Diana circulates the room, shaking hands with everyone, smiling and beaming at everyone who stops her just to say hello. Her face is glowing, either from the warmth of the room or from the champagne.

The girl next to him is wearing a silver dress slightly too long, and she holds it as she struts up towards him. “I haven’t seen you before,” she says. “Who are you with?”

He gestures out towards the floor. “Ambassador Prince,” he says.

Her eyes get wide. “No shit!”

“Yeah,” he says.

“God,” the girl says. “I bet she’s a _great_ boss.”

“Yeah,” he says. “She’s pretty great.”

“I’m Amanda, by the way.”  
  
“Steve,” he says. “How long do these things usually go?”

The girl shrugs. “Depends on how much everyone loves to talk, or how drunk everyone gets. We should be out of here by midnight. One at the latest.”

He clicks his tongue.

“Nothing much really happens,” she says. “I think they just like to get dressed up once in a while. And the rest of us get to get dressed up and hang out back here, playing Candy Crush.”

“What’s Candy Crush?”

“Oh, my god,” she says. “Give me your phone right now.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

An older dark-haired man pulls Diana from a conversation and out onto the floor. Steve watches Diana’s back flex, her muscles tensing even as her face remains smiling and pleasant, readying for any kind of fight. The man’s hands land low, sliding down lower towards her hips and her ass, his smile lecherous as he whispers to her during the dance.

Steve slides a fruit into place, watching as the points rack up.

The man’s hand tightens around Diana’s, his body pressing close as the tempo of the music begins to change.

He turns back towards his phone.

 

 

 

 

 

 

They ride home in silence that night, Diana knocking against the window to raise the partition in the chauffeured car.

“Are you all right?” he asks.

“Yes,” she says, sagging back against the seat. “These things just exhaust me.”

He reaches for her hand, squeezing it lightly.

 

 

 

 

 

 

There’s a severe landslide in Central Asia in the middle of the night.

When he wakes, Diana is gone, the cable news channels full of live coverage of screaming children, devastation, and a vision of Wonder Woman flitting among the wreckage, rescuing the wounded.

He makes himself a cup of coffee and mutes it.

On screen, Diana hoists up a mass of stone and rock, carrying it on her back to help free a handful of factory workers.

Her body strains under the weight of it, her skin dusted with mud and dried blood.

He digs the lip of the cup against his mouth.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The office, usually noisy, explodes in her absence. Steve runs through nearly a million press and publicity requests, calls from governments, calls from foreign leaders, calls from Congressmen.

The lights on the phone blink every second, the office full of passersby and well-wishers, ambulance chasers and journalists.

He accepts bag after bag of fan mail from the mailroom downstairs, turns away person after person.

The businessman from the gala swings by, his face blocked off by full sunglasses, his beard mixed with gray. “How are you,” he greets, pulling the sunglasses from his face. “I was wondering if I could speak with Ms. Prince.”

He barely glances up from the monitor. “Ambassador Prince is in Tajikistan today,” he says. “Dealing with the consequences of the landslide. But if you tell me what your appointment is regarding…”

The man chuckles. “I came directly,” he says. “I need to meet with Miss Prince.”

“ _Ambassador_ Prince is not here,” he says. “What is the nature of your request?”

“Please tell her that the COO of Blackstrap Petroleum would like to arrange a meeting with her to discuss the fiduciary possibilities of sharing our resources.”

A business card is shoved into his face. “Your resources,” Steve says, plucking the card from the man’s hand.

“We have many natural resources to offer, and I understand that…Ambassador…Prince is interested in…expanding the accessibility of these resources.”

Steve scribbles his note down on a notepad. “I will let the Ambassador know,” he says. “She or I will be in touch with you.”

“She,” the man says. “Please.”

“I will let her know,” Steve says. “Thank you.”

The man flashes a grin, turning towards the door, when he pauses. “Hey, son?” he says.

Steve grits his teeth. “Yes.”

“Between you and me,” he says, “Do you happen to know if the Ambassador’s seeing anyone?”

“No,” he says, coldly. “I don’t.”

The man snaps his fingers. “All right,” he says. “You leave her my card then, and tell her what I told you.”

He whistles on the way out.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Diana calls him from Tajikistan, her voice weary and raspy with smoke. “Tomorrow,” she says. “I’ll be home then.”

“Do you need anything?” he says. “Need me to call anyone?”

“There’s aid on the ground here,” she says. “They need supplies.”

“Okay,” he says. “I’ll make some calls.”

She sighs, and he knows she’s thinking of another time. Of fighting for a worthy mission, side by side. But it’s been a hundred years, and nobody thinks of war that way anymore. Nobody thinks of soldiers that way anymore.

(He isn’t sure he could still be one anymore. Not today. Not the way it is.)

“Are you all right?” he says.

She sniffs, and he can see the dissatisfied twist of her mouth, the knot of her fist curled against her thigh. “I will be,” she says.

 

 

 

 

 

 

He calls the car to pick her up from the airport, and sits and waits for her from the backseat.

When she clambers inside, there are flashbulbs and photographers firing off shots as she gets in, her sunglasses pushed high on her face, her expression a deep scowl.

“Are you all right?” he says.

“There’s always more of them,” she says. “They’re not interested in justice, in what I do, in fighting for what’s right. They want to know what Wonder Woman does, wears, what she thinks about this or that. Superheroes: they’re just like us.” She shakes her head, and moves to tap on the window.

The partition slowly rises, clicking shut.

“You want to sleep?” he says.

She shakes her head, moving instead to sit in his lap. “Can you just…” she whispers, leaning her weight against him.

His arms wrap around her waist, and her head comes to rest in the crook of his shoulder.

“I’m glad you’re home,” he says.

Her body trembles against his hands.

 

 

 

 

 

 

He gets a call.

 _Col. Trevor, this is the Department of Homeland Security. We need to speak with you right away_.

“ _Captain_ ,” he says.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Meeting with the government has never been an experience he’s enjoyed, and it’s even worse now. There are biometric scanners, armed guards with automatic rifles at every post, and everyone looking at him askance.

He comes in for his late afternoon appointment, gets shown into an empty conference room, and waits.

His contact walks in ten minutes later. “Colonel Trevor,” she greets.

He stands. “Captain,” he says. “Miss Waller?”

“ _Director_ ,” she replies. “Have a seat.”

He sits down. “So,” he says.

“We’d like you to consider joining our team,” she says. “I head an organization called ARGUS, and we operate as liaison between our super-powered save-the-world friends and everybody else. And I hear that’s something you might know something about.”

He presses his lips together and nods once. “I might.”

“We have a copy of your file—your _real_ file—and we know that the circumstances around your, uh, reappearance are somewhat hazy,” she says. “We also know that you’ve developed a significant relationship with Wonder Woman.”

“Now, listen,” he says. “If this is just about getting through to her through me…”

“It’s not,” she says. “It’s about joining a team that will help make sure that they have what they need to do what they do. Would that be something of interest to you?”

He glances down at the file on the table. “You have a brochure or something?” he says.

She doesn’t smile. “I’m sure there’s some people who find that charming,” she says. “But if you have any questions, you can ask me. I need your answer.”

“ARGUS, huh?”

“Advanced Research Group United Support,” Waller replies. “It’s an acronym.”

“All the good ones are.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

(Diana, over dinner: _Like he who built the Argo for Jason_ , she says.

He shrugs.

 _He was directed by Athena_ , Diana replies. _He was wise._ _What did you tell her?_

 _I told her I’d give it some thought._ )

 

 

 

 

 

 

Diana leaves for the G-20 the day he flies to Colorado Springs for his induction. (“They don’t like to call it orientation,” he says. “They think it sounds cheap.”

Diana shrugs. “These organizations are all the same,” she says. “They want others to think they are serious more than they want to do the work.”)

There is a quick kiss on the mouth for hello, for goodbye, and a collection of bags packed by the door, his and hers.

She calls a car.

He takes a cab.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 _Landed_ , he texts, when he spies his government-issue car.

His phone chimes a moment later. _See you in a few days._

 

 

 

 

 

 

(A week into having his new cell phone, and Chief is the one who shows him how to use it. Obscenely-priced telephone or not, Chief says that no one really uses it to make calls anymore. Instead, there are things like texts and DMs, emails and videos, and a whole bunch of other words that sound suspiciously like English even if he doesn’t know what they mean.

“It’s a lot more than a telephone, cowboy,” Chief said. "People keep their whole lives on those things.”

Steve wrinkled his nose. “What the hell is with all these letters anyway?”

Chief shrugged. “It’s like shorthand,” he said. “So you don’t have to type so much.”

His phone pinged, and he checked it, slowly unlocking the screen.

“ _You_ texted me?” he said.

Chief grinned.

“I’m sitting right here,” he said.

“Yeah,” Chief said.

“Right next to you,” Steve said. “You could have just turned and…said the words. With your voice.”

“What does it say, Steve?”

He glanced down at the message. “W, t, f? What the hell does that mean?”

Chief clicked his tongue. “You’re so close,” he said. “One letter off.”

“You know what, man,” Steve said. “Fuck you. What’s the fucking shorthand for that?”

“Better than Morse code, isn’t it?”

Steve narrowed his eyes. “Shut up, and show me how this thing works, would you?”)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Colorado Springs looks like just about every other military base he’s been to, except for the fact that it’s underground.

Director Waller leads him around, showing him the different rooms, the training spaces.

“You haven’t been combat ready in a long time,” she says. “It’s time that we change that.”

“Being dead will do that to you,” he says. “And I thought this was an auxiliary position.”

“It’s a support organization, Captain Trevor,” she says. “But that doesn’t mean that we’re paper pushers. Is that a problem?”

He glances down the long hallway, catching sight of a boxing spar in one of the rooms. A body hits the mat with a hard landing.

He shakes his head.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 _There are too many people who think coming here is all they need to do_ , Diana sends. _They keep looking to me like I can do everything._

 _How is your induction?_ , she sends.

 _Miss you_ , he replies.

 _It’s just what I remembered_ , he replies.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Director Waller is right; he is out of shape.

It takes him three weeks just to be able to get back into fighting form, another three to be able to focus on all the paperwork and policies.

“We’re hoping to get you in the field sooner rather than later,” Waller says.

He nods. “What does this mean for my work with the Ambassador?”

Waller smirks. “Consider this an extension.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

He lands at home four weeks after that, dropping his bags down once he crosses through the doorway.

Diana’s asleep on the sofa, a briefing book dropped from her hand onto the floor.

He walks behind the couch, dropping a hand against the top of her head and stroking back her hair in greeting. She turns, restless, and peers up at him with half-opened eyes.

“Hey,” she whispers. “You’re home.”

“I didn’t want to wake you,” he says.

“I shouldn’t have been sleeping,” she says.

“What are you doing out here?”

She yawns. “I don’t like sleeping in there,” she says. “I told you. How was your induction?”

“Basic training all over again,” he says. “And then some.”

She raises her eyebrows. “You said it wasn’t a tactical unit,” she says.

“It isn’t,” he says. “But this isn’t my first time fighting, either.”

She colors. “I know,” she says. “But it’s different. I’m not—I can’t be there fighting with you.”

“Come on,” he says. “Let’s go to bed.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

She sleeps with her body nearly on top of him, her hair crowding around his face, her arms thrown against his chest.

She’s a solid weight, one he appreciates.

It’s only when she begins to snore that he falls asleep.

 

 

 

 

 

 

He gets his first mission assignment two days later.

A clean-up job in the jungles of Nicaragua.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 _I’ll be back soon_ , he sends.

 _Be safe_ , she replies.

 

 

 

 

 

 

They’re posted on rehab duty, cleaning up and monitoring radiation levels and reconstruction after the traffic of a radioactive nuclear warhead through a series of villages.

It turns his stomach, the sight of the demolished homes, the clicking noise of the Geiger counter as they move from home to home in their Hazmat suits.

The towns have been evacuated, but not soon enough, Steve thinks. Not early enough to avoid causing somebody collateral damage.

They find a withered body behind one of the houses, burns blistering the dead skin.

“We got to contain this,” Dale says.

Steve exhales. “Yeah,” he says. “Let’s wrap her up.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

Something goes wrong.

Something _always_ goes wrong.

 

 

 

 

 

 

They get pinned between two rival militias, desperate for arms. He and Dale camp out in a rickety tin shed, hearing the noise of bullets ricochet off of the sides.

“Jesus Christ,” Dale says.

“It always go like this?” Steve says.

Dale huffs a laugh. “Not always. Feeling the green wear off yet?”

He rubs at the mask of his suit. “Yeah,” he says. “Just like old times.”

“You got any idea what the hell we’re going to do?”

“We’re outgunned, outmanned, and, if we like the way our skin feels, we should probably keep these suits on, so…not much, no.”

“I could kill for a set of grenades right about now,” Dale says.

“Or the cavalry.”

“Look around, Trevor,” Dale says. “Who do you think is coming for our dead asses?”

 

 

 

 

 

 

They make a run for it during a break in the gunfire.

The gunfire follows them, a steady drumming rhythm that sounds like the noise of footsteps.

 

 

 

 

 

 

A bullet pierces his suit, burning its way through him.

Dale stretches a hand back, hauling him to his feet. “C’mon, man,” he says. “Can’t let you die your first run out.”

“What can I say,” he says, clambering to his feet. He can barely breathe, sweat dripping off of his head in the suit. “I’m rusty.”

Dale pushes him forward. “We make it to the rendezvous point, we’re golden.”

“If I’m dragging you down,” Steve says, tripping over a branch, “You know you got to leave me behind.”

“Come on,” he says. “Whatever happened to _semper fi_ and all that Latin bullshit?”

“I was in the Air Force,” he replies.

“Yeah, well,” Dale says, “That doesn’t mean you can’t move your ass.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

When they get to the rendezvous point, his skin feels like it’s on fire, his limbs heavy as he tries to keep pushing forward.

When he sees the Osprey, he collapses.

They pry the suit off of him, and he sucks in a gasp of cool air, his eyes trying to focus in the dim light.

Director Waller leans forward into his line of vision. “That wasn’t what I expected to send you into,” she says.

“Yeah,” he rasps. “It was a nice surprise.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

(In New York, a phone rings in the early morning hours, a woman’s voice greeting her on the phone, somber and flat.

_Miss Prince._

_Yes?_

_This is Director Amanda Waller. I oversee ARGUS._

A chill runs along her spine. _Yes?_

_A situation has arisen with a mission._

_What kind of situation?_

_We’ve lost radio contact with Trevor and his team_. _We thought you should be aware._

She sits up in bed, running a hand through her hair. _What information do you have?_

 _Next to none. We’ll update you as the situation progresses_.

She sucks in a shaky breath. _Do you think they’re still alive?_

Waller is quiet on the line. _We don’t have any information. We’ll update you as the situation progresses_.

 

 

 

 

Diana sits in the dark for hours, trying to find a starting point for any kind of a plan. He has always been a fighter, she knows that. He has always wanted to battle on his own terms, she knows that too. But to die alone—twice—

Her ribs squeeze tightly around her, and she feels herself struggling to breathe, to keep a clear head. In her bedroom, there are mementos and memories, discarded items left with the thought that he would one day pick them up again.

His sweater, draped across the back of a chair. His toothbrush in the bathroom. His glasses, kept in the medicine cabinet.

She scans through her phone, scrolling through their messages.

 _Be safe,_ she had told him. _Be safe_.

If she had been fighting beside him, she wouldn’t have let him go down without a fight. If she had been fighting beside him, he would not have been alone.

Her head pounds with the beginnings of a migraine.

 

 

 

 

She cannot bury him again.

Not again.

Not without her friends (their friends), not now, not after having lived with him and known him, not after having tasted the beginnings of a real life.

 

 

 

 

She recalls the sight of Etta’s face, pale with shock, her lips pressed together in a disbelieving fury.

Diana stands, reaching for the edge of a table in order to brace herself. The knuckles of her hands grow white.

She hears the noise of Etta’s sobbing break over her from a thousand miles away, from years ago, and wishes she could reach out and take comfort in her embrace.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

When he wakes up, the first thing he sees is a dark head of hair lying against the side of his bed.

He reaches for the rail on the side of the bed, and his IV rattles.

“Hey,” she says, lifting her head. “You’re awake.”

“Hey,” he says.

She burrows her head against his shoulder. “When they called me, I thought that you were—they didn’t know where you were…”

He brushes a hand against the top of her head. “It’s all right,” he says. “I’m all right.”

“You could have died,” she whispers. “You could have died.”

“I’m all right,” he says. “I’m all right.”

She leans in and presses a heated kiss against his cheek. “Rest now,” she says. “I’ll be here.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

She crawls into bed beside him, pressing herself tightly against the side of the bed.

He inches across to make space for her, his arm circling her back.

She presses a kiss to his forehead, against his neck, and he can feel the wetness of her tears against his shoulder.

That night, she talks in her sleep, whispering his name again and again. _Let me do it_ , she says. Over and over.

_Let me do it._

_Let me._

 

 

 

 

 

 

They return home a week later.

 

 

 

 

 

 

He wakes up to find her watching him, her head propped on her hand.

It’s been long enough for his body to begin healing, not quite long enough for it to stop feeling sore. But when he wakes up, the light streaming through the slats in the blinds, he rolls onto his side and meets her gaze. “Good morning to you, too,” he says.

She says nothing.

“Did you sleep at all?”

“You could have died,” she says.

He shakes his head, stretching his arm behind him. “Fool me once, shame on me, fool me twice…”

“Steve.”

He reaches out to brush a tendril of hair away from her face. “It was a one in a million chance,” he says. “You know as well as I do how these missions go. It was part of the job.”

“I wasn’t there to protect you,” she says. “I should have been there to protect you. You can’t go where I can’t follow you.”

His hand traces the contour of her cheek. “There’s some things that we have to do alone, Diana,” he says. “You are so strong, so busy protecting other people, and I can’t get in the way of that. I shouldn’t. And you know that.”

“You,” she begins, her voice cracking, “You need protecting, too.”

He wraps his arms around her and pulls her body against his. “You know,” he begins, his voice low, “When I was a kid, my mom used to have this saying. Whenever anything happened that I thought wasn’t fair, that used to make me upset, she’d tell me that it was all right for me to feel the way that I did, that no one else could tell me otherwise, but there was no point in getting stuck in the mud about it because—and this is what she’d say—sometimes, what you get is what you get. There isn’t always anything you can do. There isn’t always a way to stop something from happening. What you get is what you get, Diana. And sometimes, you can’t always protect everyone.”

“I know,” she says, pulling him in for a kiss. “But I can always try.”

“That’s what makes you…wonderful.”

She cringes.

“Too much?”

She laughs, the last of her tears slipping down her cheeks. “Did you plan that speech?”

He hums in his throat as she rolls to rest on top of him. “Parts,” he says, his hand settling against her back. “I had notecards and everything.”

“Only to be ruined by a bad joke.”

“How dare you,” he says. “It was a perfectly decent joke. It was a dead audience.”

She brushes her mouth against his. “How dare you,” she says.

“My apologies,” he says, slipping his hands into her hair and deepening the kiss, “Madam Ambassador.”

The kiss, slow and sensuous, turns hungry, his hand fisting the back of her t-shirt as he pulls her closer. Her mouth slides wet and slick against his as she rolls her hips over his half-hard length. Her hair is wild, mussed by sleep and his hands, splaying out in all directions as he pushes her shirt up and over her head.

“Are you healthy enough for this?” she says, her hand grazing the medical bandages wrapped around his midsection.

He leans up to kiss her again, growling his answer into her mouth. Her body is humming, still warm from sleep and suddenly sanguine with desire, and she bows her back as she pushes him to lie down against the bed. Her hair drapes over his face as she kisses him, her hands caressing the bare expanse of his chest.

She feels the ripple of muscle under her hands, and she slows down, taking care to explore the landscape of small, smooth bumps of healed scars and cuts. There is so much about him that she has yet to learn, she thinks. So much about his body that she has yet to discover.

His hips surge up against hers in answer, and a flurry of heat shoots straight to her core. It’s been so long since she’s done this, since she’s done this with _him_ , and all she can think, all she wants, is _more_. She must say that aloud because his hands, rough and calloused, slide up her hips to cup her breasts, his thumbs circling the dark buds of her nipples.

She sucks in a hard breath, leaning down to press more of them into his hands.

“I’m going to turn you over,” he says.

“Like being on top?”

He snorts, slowly rolling her over onto her back and settling over her. “It’s easier on me,” he says, punctuating his sentence with a hot kiss to her throat.

Her breath jumps in her chest, and he licks a trail down from the hollow of her throat to her sternum. He turns to one breast, his mouth sinking over it, the flat of his tongue sliding slowly over her nipple. She gasps, her hands raking along his back up to the base of his neck.

“More,” she whispers. “Harder.”

He removes his mouth, turning to the other. The hard point of his tongue flicks twice against her and she arches back against the mattress, sighing his name.

When she opens her eyes, she sees his—the blue touched with darker hues, still focused on hers.

“Doing all right?” he says.

“Mmhmm,” she says. “How about you?”

He kisses her, softer and less urgent, and she rolls them over again until she rests on top of him.

“You could warn someone,” he says.

She smiles and kisses him again. “Where’s the fun in that?” she says, moving her mouth to his throat, down the column of his neck, his collarbone. She sucks a bruise against his skin, and he growls low in his throat, his fingers scratching at her scalp as she moves down to lick at his nipple.

He groans at the contact, and she turns to the other, laving it with her tongue.

“Diana,” he groans, as her free hand slips beneath his boxers.

She licks the palm of her hand, glancing up to smile at him. His eyes are focused on her, his tongue flicking out to lick his lips as she takes the hot length of him in her hand and strokes. He groans her name, his eyes rolling back into his head.

"Is this all right?" she asks.

"All right," he repeats, as she settles into a halting rhythm. "Yeah, it feels all right."

His hips jerk up to meet her touch as her thumb circles the head of his cock. “Let me,” she says, sliding down his body.

She pulls his boxers down, letting them fall from his legs to the floor.

Her hand moves against him in another stroke, and his hips jerk up against her hand. Call and response. “Oh, _fuck_ ,” he moans.

She licks her lips, heat curling low in her belly. She likes hearing him swear more than she realized.

“God, Diana.”

She moves down the length of his body until her mouth is poised above the jut of his hip. A scar decorates the contour of his hip, and she marks it with a kiss. 

He shudders. “Diana, you don’t have to…”

On the opposite side, another matching scar. She traces its line with her tongue, and he gasps.

“Is this all right?” she asks, her voice husky.

“Diana…” he pants.

She glances down at him, her hand curled around the base of his cock. Humming, she leans down and licks a line from the base to the tip with the flat of her tongue. When he swears again, she colors. She likes _making_ him swear more than she realized. She glances up at him from beneath her eyelashes, and he presses his head back against the pillows, muttering under his breath.

“You keep looking at me like that,” he says, “and this is going to be over before it starts.”

She hums. “I have wondered about how you taste,” she says. “Thought about it.”

He grunts. “Unfair,” he says. “Can’t say that either.”

She chuckles, dropping her head down to lick him again, her tongue sliding slowly against his hardness before she takes him fully into her mouth. He’s smooth and hot against her tongue and all she can see when she glances up at him is the tightness of his jaw, his cheek pressed back hard against the sheets, his mouth murmuring her name as his fingers flex against the sheets.

“Fuck, Diana, _Christ_ , oh,” he murmurs, as she works her mouth over him, her cheeks hollowing as she starts to suck. “God…”

His hips surge up, pushing more of him into her mouth.

She takes her time, her hand scratching along the line of his hip as her mouth pulls back up to swipe at the tip with her tongue. Her eyes stay locked on him, half-hidden by the long shadow of her eyelashes, and he squeezes his eyes shut because _god_ , if he keeps looking at her, there’s no way he’s going to last.

His hand slides into her hair, all of his focus intent on not pushing her to take more of him. She hums, her mouth sinking down over his length to take him deeper, and he gasps. He can feel the vibration of her voice thrumming through his body, tensing with need and restraint.

“You have to stop,” he says. “Diana, or I won’t…”

She slides her mouth off of him with a satisfied smile before crawling up towards him. “It is not what I expected,” she says.

He pushes her onto her back with a quiet gasp. “Yeah?” he huffs, panting. “What were you expecting?” His hands slide up her arms, pinning them back against the bed as he kisses her neck. 

She pushes back against his hold, just slightly, and he smiles, his hands sliding down her body to hook in the sides of her underwear and pull them down.

She widens her legs, making room for him to settle between them, and he does, relishing in her answering moan as she rocks urgently against him. He wants this to last—wants this to be good for her, to be memorable, god help him—and he reaches down with one hand to brush the head of his cock against her entrance.

Her hands grip at his shoulders. “Steve,” she whispers. “Enough waiting. Now.”

When he pushes inside her, she groans, her head falling back against the pillows as he inches the rest of the way inside her.

Her eyelashes flutter in quick movements against her cheeks as she huffs out a breath.

“You all right?” he says.

She groans, her muscles aching at having to stretch around him. “I forget,” she says, as he braces his arms on either side of her, “how big you are.”

He grins into the side of her neck, nipping lightly at the skin with his teeth.

She groans at how good he feels buried inside of her, how every time he laughs, he moves, she can feel it in her core. He kisses her, his hips thrusting shallowly with the motion, and her breath hitches in her chest. “God,” she whispers, “Steve.”

He moves slow, feeling her muscles adjust around him. He bites down hard against his lip at how good she feels, silken and hot wrapped around him, as he thrusts back into her wet heat. Diana’s never been one to be quiet, and she’s all noise today, her breathing sharp, her cries loud. She wraps a leg around his waist to pull him closer, and she moans. “God,” she breathes, and even that speaks of need. “Come on.”

She grunts, digging her heel against his thigh.

He draws himself out before thrusting back in, measuring the soreness of his ribs against how much he wants to just lose himself in her. Her hair is fanned back against the pillow, her hands rising to palm her own breasts, and he leans down to bury his face against her hair. His hips start pounding against hers, the wet sound of sex loud in the air, and she moans, extending her neck as she arches back against the mattress.

“Oh, Steve, Steve,” she gasps, her breath pitching higher the way that she does when she’s close.

He tangles his hand in her hair and twists, pulling gently, and she gasps with pleasure.

“Harder,” she moans. “God, Steve, yes…”

His hips grind roughly against her as he slams inside of her, his mouth sliding over hers and swallowing her noises. He could listen to her forever, he thinks. The noises she makes in bed, the way she wants, it’s all he ever wants to hear for the rest of his life.

She gasps sharply, so close to the edge, and he reaches down between them to thumb clumsily at her clit, watching as her body clenches and shudders around him. “Fuck,” she cries, her nails digging hard into his back. “Yes, oh, god, yes…”

He pulls out, aching, still wet from her, and he says, “Can I…? From….behind?”

She bites down on her lip and gets onto her knees, reaching for his hand with her own.

When he slides inside of her, he swears against the nape of her neck, the new angle pushing him deeper. He’s close, his hands anchoring against her hips as his thrusts get clumsy and desperate. His mouth falls against the back of her neck, his tongue licking shapes against her sweat-slicked skin.

She sighs, pushing back against his thrusts as his hands tighten on her hips. “Diana,” he moans, “Oh, fuck, Diana, yes…”

She reaches behind her, her hand scratching at his hair, and he thrusts inside her one last time, her name a shuddering gasp on his lips.

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Welcome home,” she says, lying in the afterglow after.

“There’s nowhere else I’d rather be,” he says.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Another round and an hour later, they manage to climb out of bed.

She slips on his t-shirt, lying discarded on the floor, and it hangs loose on her, dropping down to cover too little of her thighs. He eyes her legs as he follows her out into the kitchen. “Well?” she says.

“Well what?” he says.

“I seem to remember somebody saying that they were an expert at breakfast,” she says. “But never has he shown me anything to back up his claims.”

“Are you going to make coffee?” he says.

“Of course! You can’t have breakfast without coffee.”

“That’s very true,” he says.

She fusses with the overpriced coffee machine and the series of filters as he searches through her cabinets for a frying pan.

“You have bread?”

She shrugs. “I think so.”

“Eggs?”

She points to the fridge. “Look in there.”

“Nothing fancy,” he says. “But cheese eggs and toast is a bit of a Trevor family specialty.”

She arches a brow, counting out spoons of grounds for the machine. “Oh, is that so?”

The fridge door rattles as he pulls free an armful of ingredients. “It isn’t special, but it’ll do.”

“Well,” she says. “I have to see what an average American breakfast looks like, don’t I?”

“If you wanted an average American breakfast,” he said, “there would definitely be bacon. You don’t have any bacon.”

“So,” she replies, “save some of it for next time.”

He grins. “Keep the mystery alive?”

“Something like that.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

They have a breakfast of overdone toast and eggs with cheddar cheese and overly strong coffee. The coffee is bitter, but he feeds her a bite of toast and steals eggs off her plate.

She rests her legs in his lap, and they take so long to eat it all goes slightly cold.

Her phone buzzes and buzzes against the counter, and his thumb traces the jut of bone of her ankle as he glances at it.

“What day is it today?” he says.

“18th,” she says.

He crooks a finger at her. “You have that call with that oil man today,” he says. “The one from Texapro.”

“No,” she says.

“No meeting?”

“Wrong company.”

“You need to take it?”

She leans in and kisses him. “It can wait,” she says.

Her kiss tastes like sharp cheddar. “You sure?” he says. “A good oil tycoon husband goes a long way.”

She shakes her head. “I’m okay with what I’ve got.”

“Home-cooked meal and some burnt toast? Washed up ex-military pilot?”

She stretches and leans against him. “I’ve got you.”

“Yeah?” he says. “I love you, you know.”

“I know.”

“And I’ll honor and cherish you, too,” he says. “Three for one.”

“Are you proposing marriage?” she says.

“No,” he says, rising to grab the newspaper. He unfolds it intently, plucking out the sports pages and the crossword.

“I always do the crossword,” she says.

“So do I.”

“You have to share.”

He folds the crossword page and sets it in the center of the table. “There,” he says. “But I get to write it in.”

She shakes her head. “This proposal is not off to a good start.”

He shrugs, looking at her out of the corner of his eye, pen in hand. Her face lights with laughter, her toes flexing in his lap. “Take it or leave it.”

She covers her face with her hand, shaking with laughter. “All right,” she says, clearing her throat, her eyes bright with humor. “All right, I’ll take it.”

**Author's Note:**

> Forgive the sheer exercise in self-indulgence that this is. I wanted to see them in an established relationship and happy, and this came out of that. Honestly, this started out as a disconnected set of ideas for three separate fics that I wanted to write, and I thought, _why not just put them all together, that sounds like a great idea!_ If it makes you feel any better, this took me an obscene amount of time to write.
> 
> I know nothing about comics. A.R.G.U.S., Dale (Gunn), and Amanda Waller are real things/characters that I have little working knowledge of, and I hope they didn't come off too badly.
> 
> Gal's red dress from the Batman vs Superman London premiere was the evening wear inspiration.
> 
> Writing Steve Trevor's transition to real modern day life was significantly influenced by Chris Pine's actual semi-luddite, cozy sweater kind of self. So I'm saying give him a record player and take back the touch screen, basically.
> 
> You can think of this as a companion piece to _the home fires_ if you want to, but they're not really super related.


End file.
